O'Sullivan family travels and beyond

Category Archives: #greatgettogether

The sun has been shining and we’ve been making the most of the beautiful weather. It is that time of year, as the school holidays approach, we are really ready for summer. The flowers, particularly near Madeira Waterfall in Ramsgate, are looking absolutely fabulous.

The warm weather has meant we can enjoy an ice lolly or two at the bandstand. Seamus loved dancing to ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’ fronted by Trevor Neal. He danced so much, he really needed the lolly to cool down afterwards!

Another visitor to the Bandstand was Plasticus, a sculpture made from the amount of waste plastic that ends up in our oceans every second! A truly horrifying statistic and very powerful to see. It was very well done and made a great talking point of the town.

Plasticus arrived at the same time as filming on the beach took place for ‘Landscape Artist of the Year’ programme. Joan Bakewell and Stephen Mangan were filming and the artists could not have hoped for a nicer day to be at the seaside. Sadly we don’t have Sky, so we won’t get to see the finished programme.

We will however be making a trip to the cinema when Juliet, Naked is released later this year, as part of it was filmed in Broadstairs and Ramsgate. Click here and see how many bits of Broadstairs you can spot!

Dickensian Broadstairs came to life briefly when we saw the Annual Dickens parade through the town. The celebrations seemed a little shorter this year, no doubt due to costs, however we did enjoy seeing the efforts people had made with their costumes.

Another venture back in time was possible when we went to Sandwich for the Medieval Weekend. The kids got to hear fascinating facts, touch artefacts and even try on helmets.

More celebrations were going on there, as they had Le Weekend, where traders travel from France to sell their wares. We bought pain au chocolat and of course, cheese.

The French theme continued when Seamus celebrated in school, learning about French culture, trying croissants and crepes and learning a few French words. He could ditch the uniform for the day and wear red, white and blue – the colours of the Tricolor – but we added a garland of paper onions, beret and moustache for a bit more fun. Oo-la-la.

Our biggest news this month is our newest additions to the family. Arriving aptly on Fathers’ Day, Ian got to collect his long-awaited chickens after months, if not years, of planning. Everyone got to choose their chicken, so we have a mixture of Light Sussex, Speckled Rock, H&N Nick and Bovan Neras. We have already started to get eggs. The kids love feeding the chickens and putting them back into the coop at night. Names? Kentucky, Nugget, Egbert, Goujon and Noisy Beak.

One happy daddy!

And we were lucky enough to catch a visit of baby chicks and ducklings when we went to the Pavilion after school one day. All the kids who were there adored having the opportunity to hold them.

It was a lively time when we celebrated Orla’s birthday. She and 6 friends (plus Aoife and Seamus…. we couldn’t leave them behind, could we?) went to Revolution. They had an hour of climbing and an hour of scootering on the ramps, followed by pizza and party food. It was great fun and wonderful to see them all climbing as high as they felt comfortable in their harnesses. The instructors were fantastic and so patient and encouraging to everyone.

Equally tiring was the action packed Community Day at Thanet Wanderers Rugby Club. We hosted a fun day of rugby and challenges for the community, so existing players or anyone new to the sport could join in. Everyone was give a t-shirt of blue, gold (blooming orange!) or black to represent the club colours and every activity you took part in would get points for that team.

The day was run in memory of Paul Keohane and Seamus was chosen to be Vice Captain of the gold team! Myself and Mario ran an hour-long session of rugby games for the mini age group whilst the older players had matches and then we ran one of the nine challenges … we had the Slip and Slide! A very popular event on such a hot day. Nothing like being pelted with wet sponges as you run across a soapy tarpaulin trying not to fall over. Tyre flip, welly wanging, timed assault course, Kicking practice and more, there was a lot going on and we were there all day.

When the points were added up, the Gold team were victorious and won the first Paul Keohane Cup. A great event and hopefully the start of many more to come.

Another event in memory of someone special was The Great Get Together, for Jo Cox – the MP who was murdered two years ago. We baked some cakes and joined a gathering in Ramsgate, celebrating that we have much more in common with others than divides us. #JoCoxMP

And of course the month would not be complete without a bit of sport … The girls both had a great time at their respective sports days, both being in the top scoring class of their year groups. Thankfully I managed to escape the horror of the Mums’ Race!

Orla took part in a very hot cross country run and since she needed to find a girls’ team, Aoife has now joined Folkstone Rugby Club.

And we spent a lovely morning volunteering to run a rugby stand at a neighbouring school’s fayre to help them raise funds… although we did get a free glass of Pimms to say thanks and keep us hydrated!

We’ve still got another sports day, an inset day, two school fayres, new class/school transition day for everyone, an end of year performance, a music night and a ‘goodbye to junior school’ event and disco to go before the summer holidays truly begin… phew! Best have a cup of tea and get ready for a busy July.